I was lucky to be one of the guests on In Our Time this morning (21 March) at 9.00 AM, to speak about Wallace. Here is a description of the programme from the BBC website:

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of Alfred Russel Wallace, a pioneer of evolutionary theory. Born in 1823, Wallace travelled extensively, charting the distribution of animal species throughout the world. This fieldwork in the Amazon and later the Malay Archipelago led him to formulate a theory of evolution through natural selection. In 1858 he sent the paper he wrote on the subject to Charles Darwin, who was spurred into the writing and publication of his own masterpiece On the Origin of Species. Wallace was also the founder of the science of biogeography and made important discoveries about the nature of animal coloration. But despite his visionary work, Wallace has been overshadowed by the greater fame of his contemporary Darwin.

With:

Steve JonesEmeritus Professor of Genetics at University College London

George BeccaloniCurator of Cockroaches and Related Insects and Director of the Wallace Correspondence Project at the Natural History Museum

Ted BentonProfessor of Sociology at the University of Essex

If you would like to hear the programme again, visit the BBC website or listen to the repeat on BBC Radio 4 at 21.30 tonight